I'm going to just get out of the way and let whoever it was who wrote this (the article is anonymous) speak her (or maybe his) piece. Suffice to say, this person's statement KICKS ASS!!!

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Where is the physician outrage? Right. Here. I'm speaking, of course, about the required-transvaginal-ultrasound thing that seems to be the flavor-of-the-month in politics. I do not care what your personal politics are. I think we can all agree that my right to swing my fist ends where your face begins.

I do not feel that it is reactionary or even inaccurate to describe an unwanted, non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound as "rape". If I insert ANY object into ANY orifice without informed consent, it is rape. And coercion of any kind negates consent, informed or otherwise.

In all of the discussion and all of the outrage and all of the Doonesbury comics, I find it interesting that we physicians are relatively silent.

After all, it's our hands that will supposedly be used to insert medical equipment (tools of HEALING, for the sake of all that is good and holy) into the vaginas of coerced women.

Fellow physicians, once again we are being used as tools to screw people over. This time, it's the politicians who want to use us to implement their morally reprehensible legislation. They want to use our ultrasound machines to invade women's bodies, and they want our hands to be at the controls. Coerced and invaded women, you have a problem with that? Blame us evil doctors. We are such deliciously silent scapegoats.

It is our responsibility, as always, to protect our patients from things that would harm them. Therefore, as physicians, it is our duty to refuse to perform a medical procedure that is not medically indicated. Any medical procedure. Whatever the pseudo-justification.

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Loren, this is great. I already forwarded it to the listserve for my local progressive group, who has been bellyaching about the omission of the Doonsbury cartoon series being absent from our local paper. I had been wondering why no one brought these arguments to the table. Brilliantly done.